SAN JOSE — It had been a little while since there was a night full of upsets in the West Catholic Athletic League.
Everything that could have possibly gone right for the Bellarmine Bells on Friday night did, with a 62-51 win over Riordan coupled with Mitty’s shocking loss to St. Ignatius putting them back to within a game of first place, just a week after they had looked to be completely out of the running with a loss to the Monarchs.
“Our only focus was to try to win out and give each individual game our best energy,” said point guard Quinn Denker, who scored a game-high 28 points.
Denker’s 3-pointer early in the third, one of four he’d hit on the night, gave Bellarmine (18-3, 8-3 WCAL) the lead for good, and he’d score 14 in the final quarter to seal the game, including seven free throws.
After giving up a combined 21 offensive rebounds to the Crusader tandem of Mor Seck and Dominic Wilson when the teams first met three weeks ago, the Bells not only neutralized Riordan (18-3, 9-2) on the glass but held a 39-31 advantage, including 16-12 on the offensive end. Seck did have five offensive boards and 12 overall, but a collective team effort from the hosts, highlighted by repeated hustle plays from the guards, ensured that the size differential wouldn’t be too much to overcome.
“I knew I had to step up, come forward, get the boards and be able to get the second-chance points, especially with the height that Riordan has,” said Cole Despie, who had seven points and a team-high eight rebounds off the bench.
It seems like a different bench player steps up in every win for the third-ranked Bells, with Jackson Dupree, Kyle Lewis and Zach Turner all filling the role in past games. On Friday, with Dupree out sick and Constantijn Cole yet to return from an ankle injury, it was Despie’s time to shine, and he was able to get some help from a nearby source.
“I always go to my brother,” Despie said of his constant talks with Connor, a 2018 Bellarmine graduate. “He’s always been there, and I’ve been able to learn from him. He’s one of the dudes that I look up to.”
One of Despie’s four offensive rebounds came in a sequence midway through the third where the Bells got three straight boards off their own misses, finally culminating in a Ryan Kiachian putback to take a 35-32 lead.
“We just kept attacking the rim even if we got blocked,” said the 6-foot-9 Kiachian, who had 11 points.
Zach Turner would draw a foul on a 3-point attempt with 1:39 left in the period and hit all three of his shots, a pivotal moment in a quarter where the hosts grabbed nine offensive rebounds while Riordan shot just 2-for-7 from the floor and committed six turnovers.
“It was such a joy to see how hard we rebounded at both ends of the floor, and it was a joy to see our juniors like Zach Turner and Cole Despie make contributions at critical comments in the game,” Bellarmine head coach Patrick Schneider said. “Zach’s free throws gave us a little bit more of a cushion and from that moment on, we really settled into our defensive goals for the night.”
Riordan could never fully recover from there, with Denker’s up-and-under move to start the fourth opening up an eight-point lead and his and-1 making it 43-34 with six minutes left. The last of his 3-pointers would give the Bells their first double-digit lead at 46-36, and a Kiachian putback stretched the lead to 12 before the Crusaders, who entered the night as Prep2Prep’s top-ranked team in the CCS, could finally start to find their form. Over the last four minutes, Riordan would have numerous chances to get back into the game, but could never hit that momentum-shifting shot or secure that loose ball that they needed to pull off the comeback and erase memories of their poor form that had lasted much of the night.
“This was a stinker, probably our worst game of the year, and we’ve just got to move on from it,” head coach Joey Curtin said.
The Crusaders’ best moments were probably in the game’s initial sequences, when Seck had a pair of blocks and a putback dunk within the first 90 seconds, but the Bells closed the first with a 16-9 lead thanks to a pair of Denker threes and one from Kiachian. Seck made one of two free throws to tie the game at 17 three minutes into the second, and a Je’Lani Clark 3-pointer would put Riordan up 22-19, but Despie would get Bellarmine’s last five of the half, first hitting a three and then answering a Chan Ngot free throw with a basket over the 6-8 forward off a slick feed from Denker.
Bryce Monroe, who led Riordan with 19 points but shot 7-of-21 from the floor and an uncharacteristically poor 3-of-8 from the line, would split a pair of free throws 67 seconds into the second half to tie the game at 24, but the Bells would lead the entire rest of the way, going in front on a Denker three and following that up with one by Ian Elam, who scored 10 on the night.
“Guys were just pressing,” Curtin said of the third-quarter struggles. “The game got stagnant and it kind of snowballed and made things worse for us.”
Clark joined Monroe in double-figures with 14, and he’d hit a pair of free throws to cut the lead to 32-30 and score on a third-chance putback to make it a one-point game 30 seconds later, but Riordan wouldn’t score again in the quarter and trailed by at least six for the entirety of the fourth.
It all added up to a Bellarmine victory in a season where the home teams have struggled throughout WCAL play. The Bells had lost at home not only to Mitty, but also to St. Francis, sending the two biggest crowds of the year home from Patrick Wayne Valley Memorial Gymnasium in disappointment, but the solid turnout that filled the building on Friday night had plenty to cheer about.
“To be able to have a crowd like this out here means so much,” Denker said. “At this game last year, we didn’t have a big crowd, so it just shows how much our Bellarmine community is coming out to support us this year and is riding with us.”
No. 4 Serra 64, No. 17 Valley Christian 46
The Padres led by just six at halftime but broke the game open with a 26-11 third quarter and cruised from there to complete a season sweep of Valley Christian (8-13, 0-11). Antonio Abeyta led Serra (15-6, 7-4) with 22 points, Muti Shuman scored a season-high 14 and Julius Alcantara had 11 rebounds. Jaiden Paran scored 10 to lead the Warriors while Jurrion Dickey scored nine in his first varsity action since December.
